After 30 years of lakeside living on Hydra Lane, Anna and Arthur Ciavardone are ready to downsize. Knee surgery has left Anna struggling to get up and down stairs, and the three-bedroom house on their 1-acre property in Washington Township has become too much to keep up with.

So after listing their home with a local real estate agent, they scheduled showings and started planning a move to a local 55-plus community.

Officials tracked the spill to a Uranus Road resident, a refinery employee who used his employer's vacuum truck — with his boss' permission — to drain his pool and empty its contents into a storm drain. There was a significant amount of oil still left in the truck's tank, however, which made its way through storm drains and into the waterways.

Whether the resident, who authorities did not identify, intentionally or accidentally dumped the oil remains to be seen, as the investigation by the state Department of Criminal Justice is still ongoing, state Department of Environment Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese said.

Either way, the Ciavardones said it's unlikely their home, still surrounded by nauseating fumes on Thursday morning, will sell anytime soon.

"We're stuck with a house we can't do anything with," said Anna Ciavardone.

The couple brought their concerns to the township's environmental commission meeting on Wednesday night, where Mayor Barbara Wallace and Fire Chief John Hoffman gave a timeline of the week's events and fielded questions from about a dozen residents.

Firefighters arrived on scene Sunday at about 5 p.m. after 9-1-1 calls reported overwhelming gasoline odors, Hoffman said. Firefighters quickly got to work deploying absorbent booms, containing the oil before it spread to nearby lakes and monitoring air quality. The state DEP soon took over the response, bringing out a private contractor to begin vacuuming up the oil and investigating its source.

Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research — a Delaware-based nonprofit that rescued dozens of turtles and water fowl following the January 2012 diesel fuel spill at Grenloch Lake — took over wildlife monitoring from Gloucester County animal control.

Hoffman said one duck, one brown water snake, and small bait fishes were found dead after the spill, and that Tri-State is continuing to monitor the rest of the wildlife in the area.

He noted the fire department, concerned about the pooling of the oil in the storm drains it traveled through to get to the pond, flushed water through storm pipes for an hour-and-a-half Wednesday until the runoff had a "negligible" oil sheen.

Contractors were working to finish the bulk of the clean up before the holiday weekend and plan to return for spot clean ups as needed, but the smell is expected to linger.

Many of the residents' questions — about the long-term impacts, health concerns and details of the clean-up process — would have to be answered by DEP officials, who will be sent a video of Wednesday's meeting, said Hoffman. Wallace added DEP representatives and Tri-State will be invited to a follow-up update meeting in August.

The spill is just the latest of issues the Ciavardones have faced with their property — they met with the mayor just three days before Sunday's spill about ongoing erosion that's eaten away at their property and may eventually claim their sunroom — but now they're specifically worried about areas of mud and dry brush on their property where oil still sat on Thursday. Among a host of other concerns, they're worried it's seeping into the soil, where it will take years to fully clean out.

"Everytime it rains, you're going to have this smell," Arthur Ciavardones said, noting they will be required to disclose the incident to any interested buyers.

Plus, both Arthur and Anna Ciavardone worked in the oil industry for years and know the ins and outs of what cutting oil is really used for.

"They mix it with all kinds of things," said Anna Ciavardone. "You don't know what's in the oil until they test it."

Hoffman said on Wednesday that the DEP is performing those tests to determine the forensic make up of the oil.

The responsible parties, the resident and possibly his employer, will be charged for the cost of the clean up, Ragonese said, adding any criminal charges would come from the state attorney general's office.

"The most important thing is to get this thing cleaned up," said Ragonese. "We'll sort out charges and penalties down the road."

Citing the continued monitoring of Grenloch Lake years after 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel poured into it and surrounding waterways, Hoffman and Wallace assured residents Wednesday night that they won't be forgotten.

That's good news to Arthur Ciavardone, who is worried about what will happen when the DEP and contractor trucks leave, but the effects of the spill remain.

"It's never going to go away. People think 'Oh an oil spill, they'll clean it up and that's the end of it,'," Ciavardone said. "It's not the end of it. We're stuck with it."